Irreconcilable Faith Crisis? Or Faith Injury to Heal?

There continues to be
lots of discussion about disaffiliation and disaffection from faith communities
these days – most often, involving a language of unexpected “faith crisis”
hitting, which can subsequently trigger what many experience as an inevitable,
irrevocable “transition process” away from religious practice.

While the language of
“crisis” may be a useful framework at times, it also has its limitations.[1] So,
I’d like to propose today another way to make sense of some of the moments that
seem often to act as early catalysts to a process of
disaffection.

For the last decade,
marriage and family therapists have been learning to better help couples
navigate intense moments that can prompt an unraveling of otherwise secure,
loving relationships – moments where marital attachment has essentially become
“injured.” Formally, “attachment injury” has been defined by Dr. Sue
Johnson and colleagues as occurring “when
one partner violates the expectation that the other will offer comfort and
caring in times of danger or distress” and is “characterized by an abandonment
or by a betrayal of trust during a critical moment of need.”

This “injurious incident”
subsequently “defines the relationship as insecure and maintains
relationship distress because it is continually used as a standard for
the dependability of the offending partner.” Whatever happened in the past thus
“becomes a clinically recurring theme and creates an impasse that blocks
relationship repair in couples therapy” (italics my own).

While acknowledging some limitations of this other proposed metaphor, I’d like to suggest the concept of “attachment injury” as having some unique applicability and relevance to the variety of incidents that often precipitate what is most often characterized as a “crisis of faith.” My proposal below applies across faith communities generally, since clearly disaffiliation is a broad phenomenon. But I take as my primary focus examples from my own faith community: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In particular, I raise
this as another way to help make sense of times or specific moments when our
understandably high expectations of life in our respective faith communities
are not only not met, but in different ways
(and for different reasons) painfully disappointed.

For instance, years ago,
a friend of mine confided how she was mistreated at an early age by religious
leaders in her evangelical faith community – pointing to that early abuse as
why she’s kept religion at arm’s distance ever since. Similar examples
now show up regularly in newspapers with titles like, “Her Evangelical Megachurch Was Her World. Then Her Daughter Said
She Was Molested by a Minister.”

The impact of any
heartbreaking instance of abuse on someone’s previous attachment to faith
(especially if that abuse comes from someone who holds a position of trust
within that faith community) is the most obvious and clear example of what I’m
calling “attachment injury” – where, what used to be a safe, secure (and even
nourishing) attachment to faith, becomes something else –
something pained, wounded, and raw – in the wake of an unexpectedly
disheartening moment (or period of time). In a Latter-day Saint faith
context, this might also include:

Entering the mission field with high anticipations, but then
encountering especially difficult experiences such as depression/anxiety,
pressure to achieve more than you feel able, etc.

Going to the temple for the first time with similarly high
expectations, but for whatever reason feeling some discomfort with your initial
experience, rather than natural or immediate comfort and
joy.

Against the backdrop of understandably high hopes that go into
most any marriage, discovering that your spouse isn’t keeping their
promises to you (whether through abuse, neglect or addiction) – with the
resulting confusion and ache of figuring out what that means.

Feeling your own personal disappointment at struggling to find
lasting, sustainable healing from an addiction or a painful mental/physical
health condition – despite earnest petitions to God in prayer.

Having a child share that they experience same-sex attraction
and/or identify as LGBT – grappling then with questions about what this means
for his/her future and place in the larger faith community.

Coming across some new information or arguments about church
history that you hadn’t heard before – and being told you’ve “been lied to by
leaders.”

While each of these
circumstances clearly involves a wide spectrum of meaningful differences, I
would argue they share at least one striking
commonality: the felt experience of
a previously unquestioned expectation of trust and dependability in one’s faith
being violated or betrayed during
a key or critical time of life. Whatever had been imagined as the right way to feel (on a mission, in a marriage,
within the temple), the ensuing lived experience had been surprising: “This
isn’t how a mission is supposed to
feel, how a marriage is supposed to go
– or how the temple is supposed to feel…etc.”

While each of these experiences are real in an important way and deserve to be regarded and respected as such, this is not the same as any specific experience being accepted as undeniably true and valid – and beyond question in any detail. As reflected in the final two examples (and consistent with what happens in intimate relationships), it’s clear this sense of betrayal or violation can arise not only from what happened – but from the deeply complex ways people respond to (and interpret) what happens.[2]

Whatever the source and
whatever the details, this kind of a resulting felt experience of betrayal
introduces a significant rupture in what
may have been to that point a fairly safe and secure “attachment”[3]
towards one’s faith community. As evident in so many stories, that rupture can
subsequently ripple out and influence everything that comes afterwards.

After having her son
“come out” as gay, for instance, one mother recounts: “We tucked him into bed,
told him for the hundredth time that we loved him, then went to our room and
fell apart. [My husband] started crying at this point. We just looked at each
other with devastation in our eyes. Mission, gone. Temple marriage, gone.
Grandbabies, gone. It was almost unbearable.”[4]

How well does this
language of “attachment injury” fit what we see in these kinds of disruptive
experiences precipitating faith crisis? And how might its influence extend to
what happens next – for instance, in a pattern of coming to experience a
“string of injuries” that build up over time (to a crisis or breaking
point).

In each case, the difficult
experience or moment seems to “define” a new kind of relationship with the
church in a visceral way – with a resulting connection that often no longer
feels “secure,” but instead involves “relationship distress because it is
continually used as a standard for the dependability” of the Church and its
leaders. So, in other words, whatever happened in those difficult, intense,
painful moments lives on within and through an
acutely transformed (disrupted/deformed) working “model” for the relationship.[5]

Once again, does that
language resonate with what you have seen or experienced in your own life – or
people you love? I’ve seen in my own life how loved ones relate to the
Church (which they have often loved and trusted greatly to that point) from a
fundamentally different place after moments like these. Whatever
confidence and reassurance may have been placed in prophetic leadership,
priesthood and official accounts of Church history may subsequently get
displaced and dislodged in profound ways.

In their place, other
kinds of trust can arise, with different kinds of reassurances (in a particular
scholar or website, or argument, or philosophy – or someone’s own feelings and
thoughts). The process by which the direction of our trust-and-love can shift so
markedly and substantially is fascinating – and in my opinion, under-discussed
+ under-explored (especially given how broad the rippling effects can be). All
subsequent interactions with the Church can thus be colored and influenced by
this bedrock shift in trust.

I would remind you that
this same rippling-influence-of-shifting-trust (and remnant suspicion, disdain,
or hostility) is precisely what marriage therapists often see happening in
real-life family relationships.

If that comparison with marital
attachment is a fitting one, I’d suggest that may be good news: because
recognizing something as an attachment injury offers a hopeful
possibility. Compared with the sense of inevitable deterioration of faith
sometimes connected to a language of “crisis,” the attachment injury model
presents a striking choice: do you
want to heal the injury…or not?

In the case of an injury to secure attachment in a marriage relationship, there are certain processes and pathways one can pursue that often lead to a deep restoration of intimacy. For instance, in a context of mutually desiring a renewal of intimacy and recommitment, a couple could walk a sustained path of intentional learning together. They can revisit painful moments (with or without professional assistance) and tenderly explore together what happened, and the particular details of responses (and interpretations) involved in the aftermath.

Doing so gently and skillfully can introduce new ways of making sense of those moments – and discoveries that invite relief (and even potentially different kinds of forgiveness). “I didn’t realize that’s what you meant…wow, that helps me understand what was going on for you.” There are also many new emotion-focused and somatic/body-oriented therapies that help people work through and release feelings that have been suppressed, ignored and bothersome for years.

Could similar pathways of
healing be available for people who have endured an attachment injury in
relation to the church?

I believe so – and I’d
love to explore with others what those might look like. If you’ve experienced
something like this in either a rupture of your relationship with the Church –
or in a subsequent restoration and healing of that same relationship, I’d love
to hear from you. Of course, critical questions and critique are always
welcome too.

I want to acknowledge in
closing that if any of the above comparison makes sense, it’s a whole different
question as to what to do about it. For most human beings + most human
conflicts, my experience is we’re really not that great at
working through the painful stuff. Part of that, I think, is we really just
don’t know how: What do I do with this intense anger sitting
in my gut? How do I move forward in this relationship after feeling so much suspicion
and hostility? We all know the miracle stories of a couple
coming back from the brink. But for every inspiring story, it’s much more
likely to hear about people pushing away from
the mess and the pain – simply avoiding it.

And that’s kind of where it
seems most people are in relation to institutional ruptures. Rather than
turning towards the mess and pursuing some kind of inner journey, it seems far
more common to separate ourselves from what hurts (in different ways). One
person might “stay mostly active” while building an emotional wall – while
another steps away more substantially. These moves are understandable, if
limiting – since neither constitutes what might be described as “healing the
injury.”

But that’s probably the
more common path – in these terms, to just live with the injury.
Isn’t it common to hear or see instances where, as one person put it, “she
hasn’t completely been able to work through something”? As a result, everything
in our experience with the Church becomes filtered through the lens of that
Uncomfortable, Unsettling, Unresolved Something.

But (and here’s the real
point again), if those people knew there was a way to Heal The Injury (fully
and completely), I can’t imagine many would want to keep living with it (or
protecting themselves from any future wound)….unless, of course, they truly saw
the relationship as un-redeemable – with the person or institution in question
So Deceptive, So Evil, and So Unforgivable that the only future possible was an
estranged one.

To any who feel that way
about the Church, I hope you will push back to reconsider the intensity of your
own judgments – and consider afresh the possibility of a healing reconciliation
of even intense wounds and injury. I’d love to find out what that could look like,
even for you!

[1] After
all, “crisis” implies and invites drastic measures, even as it viscerally
(physiologically and emotionally) calls forth a kind of “fight or flight”
mentality moving forward. Mountains of research make it clear the degree to
which this survival mentality impedes creativity, resilience and inner space
necessary to explore steps of deeper healing.

[2] There are very different
ways to interpret any given moment or experience. And so much depends on the
particular way of interpreting what happened that we adopt. In some cases where
the Church is seen as betraying trust, for instance (“you lied to me about
Church history”…”I now understand you hate gay people”), it’s clear that a
particularly accusing narrative of church leaders that questions motives and
hearts plays a significant role in the feelings of betrayal (with those who
take up a different narrative having a predictably different resulting
experience). None of us, in other words, can escape our responsibility to
interpret the world – with contrasting perceptions of what happened (or didn’t
happen) important to explore and take into account.

[3] It was Mary Ainsworth and
John Bowlby who originally founded modern attachment theory on studies of
children and their caregivers in the 1970’s and early 80’s. Then, in the late
1980s, Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver applied attachment theory to adult
relationships.

[4] As
detailed in my analysis of many similar stories, there’s a particular narrative
that clearly influences these kinds of experiences (in one way or another) –
and leading parents and families in a particular direction (in this case,
creating substantial distance and estrangement with the church). Check out section 3 called “So
much for our Mormon dreams” for more examples of this disruptive
kind of experience – as examples of what I’m calling “attachment injury” here.

[5] This
proposal attempts to draw upon key basic principles of attachment theory,
wherein individual differences in adult attachment behavior are understood to
be “reflections of the expectations and beliefs people have formed about
themselves and their close relationships on the basis of their attachment
histories.” [Fraley, R.C.; Shaver, P.R. (2000). “Adult attachment: Theoretical
developments, emerging controversies, and unanswered questions”. Review of
General Psychology. 4 (2): 132–154]. Similarly, another research team
underscores how “experiences in earlier relationships create internal working
models and attachment styles that systematically affect attachment
relationships.” [Rholes, W.S. & Simpson, J.A. (2004). Attachment
theory: Basic concepts and contemporary questions. In W.S. Rholes and J.A.
Simpson (Eds.), Adult Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Implications,
pp. 3–14. New York, NY: Guilford Press].

Mother in DraperNovember 20, 2019

Thank you for this illuminating article. It can be so difficult to tease out the various components to a "faith crisis". Using the lens/filter of "attachment" is just brilliant and has given me so much insight as well as a functional template to move forward with. Many many thanks. God bless you